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Hello everyone,
Sorry for the lack of news updates lately. I, as always, have been quite busy with normal life. Anyway, there are a number of things I want to talk about that have come up in the last couple of weeks.
We'll start with Tokyo Disney Resort, and work our way around the world.
From 24th June until 7th July at Tokyo Disney Resort, you can celebrate the magic of Disney Tanabata Days, also known as the Star Festival.
At Tokyo DisneySea you can meet ShellieMay and Duffy in their special Disney Tanabata Days costumes at Cape Cod's Village Greeting Place in American Waterfront. You can also see Mickey and friends in a very special show on Mediterranean Harbor, three times per day (10.45am, 1pm and 4.30pm) wearing their special Star Festival costumes.
At Tokyo Disneyland there is a special parade each day at 11.20am and 4.15pm, featuring your favourite Disney friends wearing yet more beautifully crafted costumes.
At both parks guests will be given the opportunity to make a wish on special cards, and tie them to specially dedicated "Wishing Places" in the parks.
After the Disney Tanabata Days end, summer season arrives at the resort, and so does the water! Jon and I have been to Tokyo Disney Resort in the summer before, and I must warn you - prepare to get wet!
At Tokyo DisneySea's Summer Festival, Minnie's Tropical Splash is described as being a "carnival celebrating the bountiful harvest of fruit" and where "hot Latin rhythms begin to throb as colourful fruit themed barges appear on the Harbor". The TDR website then goes on to describe the "torrent of water" that then sprays from the barges and the shore! Characters appearing in the show - and in new costumes this year too - are Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Clarice. The show will be presented three times daily and lasts about 20 minutes.
At Tokyo Disneyland's Natsu Matsuri event, "hot and lively dances" are the thing at the Castle Stage, during Garyo Gunbu. Team Miyabi Kenran starring Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Max and Pluto compete against Team Ryobu Shippu's Donald, Daisy, Chip, Dale and Clarice in a water filled dance battle! We've seen these water canons in action, and trust me when I say, if you don't want to get wet, avoid Central Plaza during your visit!
The show will be presented three times per day and lasts about 13 minutes.
The other show at Castle Stage will be Ondo-Ko-Don! which will be presented once per day, morning only, lasting 11 minutes. It will feature Mickey, Minnie, Donald and "others" in a special performance of a Japanese dance called the "ondo".
At both Tokyo DisneySea and Tokyo Disneyland there will be special merchandise, decorations and menu items to accompany these events.
Summer season at both parks runs from 8th July through 31st August inclusive.
We have a discussion topic about the summer fun, here on our forum.
A week later on the 7th September, the long running Legend of Mythica will end. If you're visiting before then, be sure to see this jaw dropping show before it goes away forever!
After the summer, we come to Halloween. At Tokyo DisneySea, the park will be filled with Disney Skeletons! In American Waterfront you can join the skeletons as well as the Disney characters in special costumes for their brand new show "New York's Halloween Follies". At Mediterranean Harbor you can join skeletons for "Welcome Skeleton Friends" in a participation show as they try to make new friends. In the Lost River Delta you can watch Chip 'n' Dale's Skeleton Fiesta, and finally "Street Party of the Skeleton" will be carried out in multiple areas of the park, where skeletons will dance and play around, interacting with guests and greeting them.
At Tokyo Disneyland, from what I can make out from the Japanese release, the Happy Halloween Harvest parade will return with the theme of a Halloween fair.
As with every event in Japan, there will be decorations, merchandise and food involved, too! Halloween at Tokyo Disney Resort runs from 8th September until 31st October inclusive.
Don't forget that throughout the year you can enjoy the brand new nightly spectacular at Cinderella Castle, Once Upon a Time. You can read my review of it from opening week, last month, here.
Additionally, remember that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit made his Disney Parks debut just about 8 weeks ago at Tokyo DisneySea's American Waterfront! He is super cute and gives you yet another reason to visit this summer - as if you needed ay more excuses, right?! You can check out my blog post about meeting Oswald for the first time, here, and our dedicated Oswald page, here.
Finally for Tokyo, member Ryo on our forum posted that OLC have announced some new changes to Dreamlights in 2015, including the addition of Rapunzel and an update to Peter Pan's float! I can't seem to find the actual OLC release for this, as it's probably entirely in Japanese, but if I do, I'll link it here.
Ok, moving on to Walt Disney World now, and the Disney Parks Blog released a short list of some of the characters we can expect at the Unleash the Villains event on 23rd August this year. This is the only official list posted so far, but rumours have been flying around the internet of all sorts of rare appearances! None of the characters on the current list come as any great surprise, so it'll be interesting to see who else they put into the mix. We have a discussion topic about the event here on our forum, so join us in the speculation!
The new Harambe Theater District opened in Animal Kingdom just recently, and is now the new home to the Festival of the Lion King, after a short hiatus when it closed in Camp Minnie-Mickey. Not too much to report here, but people seem to like the new location and the show remains as popular as ever. I'm glad that Timon and friends have now moved back to their native Africa after spending the past ten years in an American Summer Camp!
Finally for WDW, our friends on our forum noticed that when visiting the Magic Kingdom recently, Winnie the Pooh has decided to sport a slightly different expression! Check out this discussion thread to see how he looks now when greeting at the Crystal Palace.
Jumping across the continent to Disneyland in California, and summer has kicked off with a special Frozen pre-parade at Disneyland Park. You can check out this video of it from Inside the Magic here, and discuss it here on our forum.
Also at Disneyland, Merida has now stopped meeting at her location near "it's a small world", and has been moved to inside the Royal Hall, where I guess her appearances will be more random (switching with her royal friends). In other princess news, Anna and Elsa's greeting times have apparently been extended, and they now meet until 8pm daily.
Flying across the Atlantic to Disneyland Paris, the press preview of the brand new Ratatouille attraction and restaurant happens this weekend. The restaurant is believed to be character dining (based on concept art and even one lady on the reservation line at Disneyland Paris), but is yet to actually be confirmed - we shall find out in the next day or two for sure! Rumours have been circulating for quite some time now, and have additionally strongly suggested that Linguini will appear in the new area (not inside the restaurant)! I'll let you know of any developments on those rumours as the weekend progresses. Jon and I have reservations for Chez Remy in August, and cannot wait to see the new land! You can join our discussion topic about Chez Remy (the new restaurant), here on our forum.
Staying in France, and DisneylandBerry on Twitter (who is often very reliable) has suggested that long running show Animagique will close at some point in 2015. As much as I love this show, it would be great if they put in a brand new show, since this once has been here for over 10 years now! Disneyland Paris are notoriously bad at announcing anything, so we won't know if this is actually true for quite some time yet, I would imagine. Our members are discussing this topic here on our forum.
Finally for Disneyland Paris, InsideDLParis revealed that from 5th July this year Disney's Stars 'n' Cars parade would end. The meet 'n' greets that currently take place using the same characters and cars would be extended to include more set times, and 4 of the current cars would be used to transport the characters on and off set from the greetings. InsideDLParis also revealed that the Incredibles would return to the park for the summer near the new Spider-Man location.
To our final topic today, Iron Man. Our good friend DisneyMart discovered something interesting yesterday, while randomly poking around the Disney Consumer Products website. The recent Disney Consumer Products at Licensing Expo 2014 featured Iron Man as a character, alongside Mickey Mouse, Stormtroopers and Buzz Lightyear! What's interesting is that his appearance has been kept so quiet. He did appear at D23 last year, but since then fans have discovered that the Marvel characters at the event were not wearing their official Disney outfits, meaning that Iron Man and Spider-Man were not appearing as they will at the Disney Parks. I have no idea if this is the case for this most recent appearance, and it could be why Disney have kept hush about it, not wanting people to believe they have already developed Tony Stark's new outfit for him, but instead using an older outside design of his!
Finally, although it was a couple of weeks ago now, why not check out my previous news post to read about the Frozen Disney On Ice show and Hong Kong Disneyland's new nighttime parade!
Ok, that is everything for today! Have a great weekend everyone,
Dan.
To read my May 2014 review of Tokyo Disneyland's Crystal Palace Character Dining, click here.
To read my May 2014 review of Tokyo Disneyland's Mickey and Company Dinner Show, click here.
To read my May 2014 review of Tokyo Disneyland's Mickey and Minnie's Polynesian Paradise Dinner Show, click here.
To read my May 2014 review of Tokyo Disney Resort's Chef Mickey Character Dining, click here.
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Hello everyone,
First of all, apologies for being absent recently, we have had a lot going on here (real life) and so I haven't had chance to keep as up to date as I would like. Anyway, there are some cool new things I want to talk about today.
First of all the big event of the week will be the 24 hour event, "Rock Your Disney Side", coming to Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom and both Disneyland Resort theme parks on Friday this week (23rd).
Details are a bit sketchy right now though, sadly, as Disney seem to want to keep tight-lipped about which characters will appear, when and where. Of course, this doesn't make planning easy, especially since it is likely to be exceptionally busy like the previous events!
I have highlighted below some of the key moments (mainly character experiences) for Disneyland Resort, as per the Disney Parks Blog:
Event operating hours: 6 a.m May 23rd until 6 a.m May 24th.
At Disneyland Park:
In terms of characters, that's pretty much all that has been announced for DLR, sadly. Of course everyone anticipates that there will be a lot of characters out and about, and there is speculation floating around that some characters - villains in particular - may replace the princesses at Royal Hall, but that has not been confirmed publicly by Disney yet.
Over in Walt Disney World, the Disney Parks Blog reported the following (again, I've only highlighted the important moments and character experiences):
Event operating hours: 6 a.m May 23rd until 6 am May 24th.- Everything kicks off with a special edition of the Welcome Show, as heroes and villains make their way to Magic Kingdom Park.
- The Move It! Shake It! Celebrate It! Street Party will feature Disney heroes at 10 a.m and Disney villains at 1:30 p.m. When it comes to the 5:45 p.m. performance, though, exactly who makes an appearance will be determined by your votes throughout the day! (More information on how you can vote will be posted on Friday morning on the Disney Parks Blog).
- Magic Kingdom Park parades will each have two performances. “Disney Festival of Fantasy Parade” will be at 12 p.m and 3:30 p.m, and Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade at 11 p.m and 1 a.m.
- Wishes Nighttime Spectacular fireworks at 9 p.m
- Prior to each presentation of Disney’s Main Street Electrical Parade, the Disney villains roll through Magic Kingdom Park in a pre-parade, celebrating how “It’s Good to Be Bad!”
- Starting at 11 p.m half of Princess Fairytale Hall becomes Scary Tale Hall, where you can meet Maleficent and the Queen. The other side of the hall will still feature favourite royals Anna and Elsa.
- Around 1:45 a.m, the villains will take over the rest of the park’s character greeting locations. Where Aladdin and Jasmine appear in Adventureland during the day, expect to find Jafar. Dr. Facilier takes the place of Princess Tiana in Liberty Square, Captain Hook replaces Peter Pan in Fantasyland, and more!
- In Tomorrowland, the INCREDIBLES Super Dance Party rocks the Rockettower Plaza Stage from 4:30 p.m – 10 p.m, and is expected to feature characters from 'The Incredibles'.
- Disney’s “Up All Night” Dance Party at Cinderella Castle and the Frontierland Dance Party will run from 2 a.m – 5:45 a.m, and may (or may not...) feature Disney characters (no official confirmation, yet)
- The event concludes with a special “Kiss Goodnight” at 5:50 a.m at the Railroad Station in Town Square on Main Street, U.S.A.
The Move It Shake It heroes line up is likely to include Hercules, who has been seen out and about at EPCOT the past few weeks in preparation for his starring role in this event!
It should be noted that for both WDW and DLR there were more things announced such as bands, food and merchandise, which you can find out about if you search the Disney Parks Blog. Here at Character Central our main focus is of course characters!
Staying with Walt Disney World, and this year's Star Wars Weekends Celebrity Welcome and Motorcade saw the debut of three new characters to the Disney Parks! Sabine, Ezra and a grumpy droid named Chopper have all landed on Earth for the special weekends this year, from their new Star Wars TV show, 'Star Wars Rebels'.
Check out this video below from Attractions Magazine, which features the new characters in the Motorcade!
At the Magic Kingdom, Tinker Bell and her fairy friends have left the Nook in Adventureland, and sadly all the fairies have now left Florida and are heading back to Pixie Hollow. Tinker Bell has found a new home at Town Square Theatre on Main Street USA, filling the empty space left by the princesses when they moved into the new Fairytale Hall.
Other recent character changes in Walt Disney World include the Pooh characters leaving Animal Kingdom, and Donald and Daisy replacing them - just in regular outfits, sadly (I wonder what happened to their special DAK costumes from when they met in Camp Minnie-Mickey?).
Taking the heat off the summer at Disneyland Park in California, the Disney Parks Blog announced the other day that Anna and Elsa from the ever-popular Frozen will feature in a brand new pre-parade addition to Soundsational. At the moment no other details are known except they will feature from "mid-June".
Keeping with Frozen, and the big news this week was that there will be a brand new Disney On Ice show this autumn featuring the characters from Frozen! You may recall that I actually reported about this way back in January, when I even suggested that characters such as Olaf and Sven would appear, and now it has come true! The video below was posted by Disney On Ice and shows some great concept art for the new show.
The description on the Disney On Ice website also specifically mentions Olaf, Kristoff, Sven and the magical trolls, leading us to believe they will all feature in the new show!
Finally for news, and Hong Kong Disneyland finally announced today that their new nighttime parade will debut in October, ending long running speculation that it would start in the autumn. The brand new electric light parade will use innovative new technology and will be interactive, too, whereby guests can use a mobile app to control the colour changes on the floats!
Don't forget that Disney's Swing into Spring season continues at Disneyland Paris until the 22nd June, and features a fabulous new show-parade, characters and other offerings. You can read my review of it here, and visit our dedicated guidebook page to it here.
You can also continue to meet Spider-man at Disneyland Paris until the 10th July. The Walt Disney Studios is the only place in the world you can currently meet the webbed hero! You can read my review of our meeting with him here, and visit our dedicated location page here for more photos and information.
Finally, don't forget that the Halloween and Christmas party dates for WDW were released less than two weeks ago. You can check all the dates on my previous blog post, here.
Ok, that's everything for today,
Dan.
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Hello everyone,
There's a few things of interest this week that I thought I'd share. Sadly I haven't really had time to catch up properly recently after the big around the world trip, so you'll have to just go with it!
Anyway, Disney's Monstrous Summer at both US resorts has now started, and brings with it some new characters and greeting opportunities.
At Walt Disney's World's Disney's Hollywood Studios, Mike and Sulley can be met in their new MU dorm setting (same place as their old location), in their new MU outfits.
At the Big Hat they perform in the homecoming show, which is basically a large pop/rock dance party.
At Disney California Adventure, Mike and Sulley can be met, again at a new MU dorm setting, down in Hollywood Land.
The PIXAR Play Parade has been refreshed too, and stars Mike, Sulley and some brand new Monsters friends! Art, Scott "Squishy" Squibbles, Terry and Terri, and Archie the Scare Pig all join them! We'll be there in August and really look forward to seeing them!
Art was out for meets during the most recent 24 hour event back in May. Sadly we were not there to meet him (we were in DLP at the time!).
From the 1st to the 7th of July at both US resorts, Independence Day will be celebrated for a whole week, and will feature special character opportunities.
At Disneyland you will be able to meet Mickey Mouse in patriotic clothes, in Town Square every evening.
At Walt Disney World Goofy, Donald and Pluto will feature in patriotic clothes in a special pre-parade at the Magic Kingdom, which will also feature EPCOT's Fife and Drum Corps, as well as the much loved Citizens of Main Street (just how WDW use them in other pre-parades).
Interestingly, WDW have not yet said whether there will be character greetings at the American Adventure in EPCOT this year. Every year, for the last few years at least, WDW have featured Mickey and friends in patriotic clothes, as well as appearances by historical figures such Betty Ross and Benjamin Franklin.
I hope that the pre-parade is not a replacement for those greetings. That would be quite sad indeed to cut those.
You can read more about what is happening during Independence Week at the US Parks on the Disney Parks Blog which I linked to above (includes details of 4th July fireworks and more)
Probably the biggest news this week is that for the first time ever Disney will feature Marvel characters! Of course, they will be for limited sets at this years D23 Expo event in August, but it is a huge step nonetheless.
It is expected that Spider-Man and Iron Man will appear for limited sets on one of the days.
D23 will also feature Sofia the First (who debuted in the Christmas Day Parade at WDW last year, but not seen since), and for the first time Doc McStuffins!
The programme of events also listed characters from Jake and the Neverland Pirates, but of course we already have Jake at the parks, sparking speculation that maybe Izzy or Cubby might be coming!
Our friends at Inside the Magic have a complete breakdown of the entire event, with the greeting times, so be sure to check out their post here.
Here at Character Central we have been working hard to update the website and add more new content, including characters, autographs and movies. Be sure to check them all out! (You'll have to look for them - I don't want to make it too easy for you!)
Ok, I think that's everything for today.
Dan. |
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